The Walking Dead Season 4 spoilers: A new generation of zombies?

The Season 4 premiere of The Walking Dead is just over two months away, and we’re getting feverish for some new information about the show. The show’s executive producer David Alpert recently spoke to AMCtv about some things fans can expect from the new season. And we think you’re going to like them!

Essential read

Evolution of the zombie threat

We’ve been hearing rumblings about a possible evolution of the zombie threat almost as soon as Season 3 ended. As to what that ‘evolution’ is, we’re not entirely sure. After watching World War Z this summer, you might expect these zombie to start moving a little faster. Speed would definitely make them more dangerous. Earlier in the summer, Norman Reedus commented:

They’ve introduced a way to make the zombies scary again. They’re terrifying. The new threat is just unreal.

The more likely solution is that the walkers will start to display some kind of sentience. In the Comic Con trailer for Season 4, we saw large groups of walkers focussing on a weakened part of the fence around the prison. In the past, the walkers have been spread out, largely meandering by themselves unless there’s fresh meat for the chewing. David Alpert spoke about the mutation of the walkers:

I think we’re going to see an evolution in the walkers — there’s a whole bunch of new walkers — and we’ll see an evolution of the threat of human-on-human.

This is going to raise some interesting questions about why the zombies are mutating. What brought about the change, and is it isolated to a subset of the walkers or has it affected the entire zombie population? We love questions like this, so hopefully there will be more hints in future Walking Dead teasers. Either way, more ‘sentient’ zombies that can tactically target humans are much more of a threat.

Civilisation reborn?

Alpert hinted that this season might see the opportunity for new beginnings for our embattled survivors. After the zombie menace took out most of the human population, society fell apart pretty quickly.

What we really have here in Season 4 is we dangle the carrot that civilization can be rebuilt… The notion that there’s civilization and the notion that there’s the possibility of there being laws and a sense of normalcy. I think we’re going to see an evolution in the walkers — there’s a whole bunch of new walkers — and we’ll see an evolution of the threat of human-on-human. Dangling the possibility of civilization will make people much more desperate and willing to do things that would have previously been unthinkable.

Clearly there’s still a threat in the zombie population, so we’re going to go ahead and assume that civilisation can only be rebuilt within a ‘walled garden’ where the survivors are kept safe. Does this mean within the prison (which no longer looks viable, given the trailers) or somewhere else? Does it imply that since taking in the Woodbury survivors, Rick and company have managed to settle into a daily rhythm of life?

More deaths

Naturally, it wouldn’t be The Walking Dead without impactful character deaths. I think we all look forward to these more than any other aspect of the show (apart from the new and inventive ways they find to smash up zombies). Now, the show isn’t going to tell us just how many of our beloved characters will become ZombieChews. In fact, creator Robert Kirkman refuses to say:

We will not get rid of four major characters in Season 4. Because we have to keep things off balance. It has to be different every season. Maybe we’ll kill two, maybe we’ll kill 10. Who knows? But it will be different.

We already know that 12 members of the new prison group will be killed ‘in cold blood’, which implies they were killed by a human threat this time. However, as to which of our regulars will end up on the production’s “Grateful Dead” wall (a photo wall of all the characters who’ve died on the show), we’ll have to wait and see! Here’s that Comic Con trailer one more time.

by Gerard McGarry on August 22nd, 2013

Gerard is the founder and editor of Unreality TV. He writes about TV dramas as well as reality TV talent shows and is obsessed by sci-fi and Doctor Who. Follow him on Twitter @gerrybot or Google+

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One thought on “The Walking Dead Season 4 spoilers: A new generation of zombies?”

I can’t wait for The Walking Dead to come back and if the zombies are going to act differently and be more of a threat then that’s awesome.

Need’s something to liven things up a wee bit. The slow walking zombies were too easy to deal with. The zombies or walkers from World War Z would be ideal – or a mixture of the two – but you can’t tell which is which until they move.